They say it is the fatal destiny of Ireland that no purposes whatever which are meant for her good will prosper or take effect.
—Edmund Spenser
Spenser's grim comment was written 400 years ago, but the Irish drama seems to be eternal. The latest chapter in this unhappy story ended last week when the Executive, Northern Ireland's fragile coalition government of Protestants and Catholics, folded under the pressure of a devastating two-week general strike that had been called to preserve Protestant hegemony in Ulster. With the province near collapse, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was forced to reimpose direct rule from London, and British Tommies once again were on the alert to prevent Irishmen from killing Irishmen.
With the end of Brian Faulkner's five-month-old government, hopes for harmony between Catholics and Protestants were ended, and the prospect was for still more of the sectarian violence that has dominated Ulster for the last five years. Said Faulkner as he gave up his office: "It is the saddest day of my life and for the country I love. Today I fear we are the despair of our friends and the mockery of our enemies."
A Nervous Breakdown. Between the intransigence of the Protestants and the bumbling of Britain's Labor government there was, however, little chance for moderates like Faulkner. The Protestants, who make up about two-thirds of Ulster's population, were angry at having been maneuvered by London into sharing power with the Catholic minority. They also feared that cooperation in Ulster would eventually lead to union with the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland—a political marriage that would instantly turn their majority into a minority.
"It was almost like a nervous breakdown," said David Bleakley, a moderate Protestant. "All the little symbols of Protestant order have been going one by one, all the divinely enduring things of ordinary life and their traditions." When Britain's new government failed to heed the signals of the breakdown and offer any kind of remedy, Protestant laborers, organized into an ad hoc group called the Ulster Workers Council, began walking off their jobs on May 14 as an act of defiance.
Actually, not even the leaders of the U.W.C. expected that the strike would be successful enough to bring down the Faulkner coalition. Day by day, however, more and more workers stayed away from their jobs, and both industry and domestic services slowed to a near halt. Grocery stores ran out of food, ser vice stations emptied their gasoline tanks, and electric power was cut to one-fourth of normal output. By the end of two weeks, the strikers were so fully in control that they were regulating what little rural commerce remained and had stopped the refueling of airplanes at airports. As an added macabre touch, they even ordered gravediggers to stop burying the dead.